Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Agent Orange, herbicide used by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War to expose enemy guerrilla forces in forested areas. Agent Orange contains varying amounts of dioxin. Exposure to the defoliant has be...

(Encyclopedia) Bien Hoa bēĕnˈ wä [key], city, Vietnam, c.20 mi (30 km) NE of Ho Chi Minh City. It is famous ...

(Encyclopedia) Thich Nhat Hanh, 1926-2022, Zen master, b. Hue, Vietnam, as Nguyen Xuan Bao. At age 16, he began Buddhist training, completing his studies at Bao Quoc I...

(Encyclopedia) Westmoreland, William Childs, 1914–2005, U.S. general, b. Spartanburg co., S.C. He graduated from West Point in 1936 and fought with distinction in North Africa and Europe during World War II and la...

(Encyclopedia) Nha Trang nä träng [key], city (1989 est. pop. 263,100), E central S Vietnam, a commercial port on the South China Sea. It has an important fishing industry. It was the site of a major U.S. military...

(Encyclopedia) Annam ənămˈ, ăˈnăm [key], historic region (c.58,000 sq mi/150,200 sq km) and former state, in central Vietnam, SE Asia. The capital was Hue. The region extended nearly 800 mi (1,290 km) along th...

(Encyclopedia) Ellsberg, Daniel, 1931–2023, American political activist, b. Chicago, grad. Columbia Univ. (B.S., 1952, Ph.D., 1959). After serving in the U.S. Marine...

(Encyclopedia) boat people, term used to describe the Indochinese refugees who fled Communist rule after the Vietnam War (1975) in small boats and the many ethnic Chinese who left Vietnam similarly after China's inv...

(Encyclopedia) McNamara, Robert Strange măkˈnəmârˌə [key], 1916–2009, U.S. secretary of defense (1961–68), b. San Francisco, grad Univ. of California, Berkeley (B.A., 1937), Harvard (M.B.A., 1939). He taug...

(Encyclopedia) post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mental disorder that follows an occurrence of extreme psychological stress, such as that encountered in war or resulting from violence, childhood abuse, sexual a...